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His forehead drops to mine.
His grip on my waist tightens once, almost painfully.
“Rosie,” he says, and my name in his mouth sounds like trouble and prayer in equal measure.
I’m breathing as though I have run loops around the castle.
“So I was right in my assumptions, then,” I whisper.
He lets out a sound that might almost be a laugh, though it comes ragged.
“About what?”
“That what I said did not offend you… my wicked confession?”
At that, he leans back enough to look at me fully, and there’s such longing in his face now, such astonished wanting, that if I weren’t already wrapped around him, I might’ve thrown myself at him all over again.
“No,” he says hoarsely. “It didn’t offend me. In fact, I quite like that sinful little tongue of yours.”
I smile then, though I can feel how wrecked I must look.
“Grand.”
He stares at my mouth as if thinking of kissing me again.
I rather hope he does.
Instead, a devilish grin pulls at his mouth as he runs the pad of his thumb across my lower lip. “You let me call you family and then kiss me like that?” He shakes his head. “You’re a godsdamned menace.”
I tip my head back against the wall and grin at him, breathless and ruined and not sorry in the least.
“I’d never kiss a family member in such a way. I mean, maybe a handsome cousin, but no one nearer than that.”
He pulls a disgusted face that lasts all of a second before laughter breaks through and he rolls his eyes. “Saints above.”
“I’m only teasin’,” I say.
He catches me by the waist again, strong enough to steal the breath from me once more, and drags me hard against him until there’s not a whisper of space left between us.
His mouth hovers near mine, eyes dark enough to swallow sense whole.
“I have wanted you so long that wanting you has near become a plea for the right to call you mine.”
He brings his free hand up to bury it into the thick of my hair at the nape of my neck, curling there until he has full command of where I look and how I tilt for him.
“Have you the slightest notion,” he murmurs, his mouth just shy of mine, “what it does to hear how wet I make you? To know you want me the way that I am, and not some better version of me?”
His eyes search mine. They’re blazing and so full of feeling that I can’t do anything but stare back at him.
He drags his nose lightly along my cheek, then his mouth follows, pressing slow kisses to my jaw before moving lower, down the long line of my neck, each one unmaking me a little more. Only then does he still, his voice dropping ragged and quiet against my skin.
“Be honest with me,” he says quietly. “Does any part of you fear me after what I showed you?”
The question is so earnest it nearly breaks my heart.
I don’t answer with words right away.
Instead, I slide both hands into his hair and draw him back so I can cradle his face between my palms, making certain he can’t miss the truth of me when I speak.
